Obama Health Care Reform is at a Tipping Point. For Europe, too. [EN]

The historical struggle in Washington about Health Care Reform went mostly under the horizon of the European mainstream press. 

One understands why. The procedure got stuck, last autumn, in the dark alleyways of US decision-making on the federal level. 
For it is complicated to understand, why a Senate and a House of Representatives, both with a comfortable 50%+ majority of Democrats, cannot agree on a set of arrangements that are, since dozens of years, part of the civilization of most EU countries: Collective insurance, guaranteeing access to health care for every citizen.

Most European countries have adopted a mixed system, where state guarantees and tax measures facilitate commercial insurance companies as well as non-profit co-operatives in providing basic health care to every citizen (and, in many instances: even to non-citizen inhabitants). [...]

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A Wise Man Sets the Course For Europe [EN]

The newly elected European Council President Herman van Rompuy's historical intervention at the Bruges European Academy on March 6 did not get the attention it deserves.

Van Rompuy is very well aware of his powerlessness. He was chosen by the Sarkozies, the Merkels and the Browns just because of his apparent lack of sex-appeal and supposed lack of ambition, over candidates like Holland's J.P.Balkenende or Letlands former president.

One thing is sure, read my lips, the man is terribly UNDERestimated.

Listen to his Jesuitic-, finely tuned-, rebuttal of sarkozist and insular British policies. Developing a realistic approach to the priorities of an European Union in a new era of political globalization.
Here follows a part of it (in English):

Even Eurocritic Tony Barber of the London Financial Times ......

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Holocaust education is to encourage reflection, not to encourage a taboo [EN]

Walther Rathenau was a philosopher, businessman and minister of foreign affairs in the early Weimar Republic. He was also a Jew.He would now be classified as a Liberal Conservative or a right Social Democrat. All the same, many reasons for revanchists, anti-Semites, PI-ler, Mafiosis und Ulfkotte-people to hate him. So much so that he was murdered in 1922 by three so-called Fememörderern with a hand grenade.

He makes the difference between predetermined conclusions  from superficial analogies from history (or the collective memories) on one hand and, on the other hand, the enlightened thinking, not  the based upon stories attached to prejudice, but engaged to comparison with what is now happening. Stating: 

Denken heißt Vergleichen In short: To think is to compare

What we get to hear now too often in the debates about the supposedly necessary exclusion of potential terrorists and enemies of the Enlightenment in "our West", are the prejudiced conclusions of "the" History.
But, THE history does not exist. Only stories do exist. Narratives that communicate what people think or thought that woul be important.

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Mossad-T-shirts: Brutale onderschatting van vriend en vijand. Iets voor Wilders' Stadscommando's? [NL]

[...]

Zoals bekend, voerde de Mossad onlangs een moord-missie uit in Dubai. Doelwit: Een hoge Hamas-functionaris. Operatie geslaagd, maar heel wat "collaterale schade". De Dubaise politie kwam er snel achter, wie de 27 (!) agenten waren die, voorzien van valse Britse-, Ierse-, Oostenrijkse- en Franse paspoorten, aan het werk waren geweest. Ze staan nu allemaal op de opsporingsfotos van Interpol. De -meest Israëlische- staatsburgers van wie de westerse paspoorten waren gekopieerd en/of vervalst, zijn aan represailles blootgesteld. Bevriende regeringen zijn boos. En de tot nu toe redelijke Israëlisch-Dubaise relaties behoorlijk verzuurd.

Getuigt de opzet van de Mossad-operatie al van onderschatting (en minachting) van zowel de tegenstander als van de in verlegenheid gebrachte vrienden van Israel, de behandeling van de nasleep ervan, gooit er nog een tandje bij. In plaats van zich te schamen en de zaak "sportief" te sussen, zoals men nog in 1997 in een dergelijk geval met Jordanië had gedaan, gaat zegedronken Israëlisch uiterst rechts er nu wel heel wereldvreemd tegenaan. 

[...] "Don't Mess with the Mossad". De van zijn stiel verdwaalde gereformeerde rechtsgeleerde en toekomstige stadscommando-Führer Van Roon in Almere, kan van het onderstaande, niet bruine-, maar Arnold-Meijer*-zwarte-, hemd vast in bulk bestellen. O, wat zullen ze trots zijn op hun zwarthemden, de mensen die te laat geboren zijn, om "gewoon" gewelddadig antisemiet te mogen zijn: En ja, het Californische Wiesenthal-Centrum zal me nog wel minder willen geloven dan ze de Protestantse Kerken van Nederland (PKN) hebben willen geloven, als ik zeg dat ik spreek en handel vanuit een oprechte zorg voor Israël en zijn bewoners...[...]

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